Twenty-one graduate and undergraduate engineering students participated in the Ethos Dayton and Domestic Immersion program during the summer of 2021. Students lived and worked across the country, from the Pacific Northwest to Vermont to low country South Carolina, to right here in Dayton, Ohio. At the end of the summer semester, students immersing in Dayton and the surrounding region gave poster presentations on campus in the new connector space between Kettering Labs and the Department of Computer Sciences (pictured left). This was the first time Ethos students have presented their work in person since December 2019.  Read more below about Ethos students' summer projects. 

JaiViana Harris, junior mechanical engineering technology major, and Jordan Wilson, senior mechanical engineering major, completed a summer Ethos immersion with the Baruch Marine Laboratory in Georgetown, South Carolina. JaiViana and Jordan have worked with local community gardens and many other projects for the laboratory run by Ethos and UD alum, Dr. William Strosnider.

University of Dayton senior mechanical engineering majors, Elise Clement (middle) and Andrew Killian (right), spent their summer on an Ethos immersion with the Burn Design Lab in Vashon Island, Washington. The Burn Design Lab is a cookstove research institute that combines design, lab and field testing in local manufacturing and other countries to develop products for a sustainable tomorrow. On the weekends, Elise and Andrew explored the Pacific Northwest, including Mount Rainier.

Camryn Justice, junior electronic and computer engineering technology major, took part in the inaugural Ethos/SURE partnership in which she worked remotely with CoolCrop, an organization in India that creates sustainable and affordable cooling systems for small marginalized farmers in India. “I worked on a program that can sort and grade fruit. Using the US fruit grading system, I have been investigating different defects that affect fruit and the ranges they can cover before they are considered to be damaged. I used Visual-Near-infrared spectroscopy and python coding to aid in creating a program,” says Camryn. The University of Dayton’s School of Engineering’s Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE) program provides an opportunity for undergraduate engineering students to engage in meaningful applied research. The Ethos/SURE collaboration connects our international partners with faculty and undergraduates through remote research. 

Kedar Aparadh, graduate student, and Lucas Raimondi, senior, are chemical engineering majors who participated in an Ethos domestic immersion at Rich Earth Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont. The two worked on the institute's Nutrient Reclamation Project, the nation's first community-scale urine recycling program to transform waste into legally-approved fertilizer for agricultural use. "I gained research and development experience, and for me, working on ideas and bringing them to reality was most meaningful," says Kedar of his time with Rich Earth.

Manav Kandhari, graduate student in Engineering Management, collaborated with Dr. Kellie Schneider, Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Management, Systems, and Technology, during his summer Ethos Dayton immersion with The Foodbank, Inc. Manav focused on optimizing the current food truck routes in which donations are collected from retail outlets across Greater Dayton. To do this, Manav met with supervisors and rode along with drivers to get details about routes. He then used an open-source Excel-based tool, the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) solver to minimize both cost and time to find the most efficient route. He familiarized one of the routing supervisors with the VRP to help The Foodbank become self-sufficient in optimizing truck routes as needed. In addition, Manav helped with daily food distributions via different programs as needed within the Foodbank’s warehouse or at the location assigned.